


There is Nothing Permanent

by reeby10



Category: Arrival (2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, No Dialogue, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Ian Donnelly, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 06:04:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16258196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/pseuds/reeby10
Summary: Ian was never quite sure if Louise knew something he didn't or not.





	There is Nothing Permanent

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sinelanguage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinelanguage/gifts).



> Thank you so much to yourlibrarian for the beta!

_There is nothing permanent except change.  
— Heraclitus_

Sometimes Ian thought Louise wasn’t experiencing things the same way he was. The things she said, the things she reacted to… It was like she knew what was going to happen or what he was going to say.

And even when it was something terrible, she just went on with it. If she knew it was going to happen, she apparently saw no reason to try to break away from it. Change things. Life was unpredictable and ever changing, the visit from the heptapods had proven that much at least, but she never _tried_ to change things.

He’d asked her about it once, a few years after they got married. Only once, because she hadn’t answered, and somehow he knew he wouldn’t have understood even if she had. Louise, in that moment the question left his lips, was someone different. Maybe even somewhen different. It was that thought that kept him up at night, years after they divorced, years after Hannah died.

When Hannah was born, less than two years after the heptapods, Ian was ecstatic. His perfect, beautiful daughter became the center of his universe. Along with Louise, of course.

She seemed just as thrilled at this addition to their little family. Or she acted that way. At the time, he’d found it strange, but he’d put it off to postpartum depression. That happened with some women after giving birth, it wouldn’t have been strange for it to happen to her. So he tried to be supportive, tried to do anything he could to ease her burden, to be a good father and husband.

But it was one of those things that looking back, he wasn’t so sure it was exactly the way he’d always thought it was. Had she known what was going to happen? Was she expecting it and dreading it from the very moment Hannah was born?

It haunted him, the possibility that their relationship, their _family_ , was doomed from the beginning. More so the possibility that Louise had known and hadn’t said anything. But would it have done any good? Would he have believed her if she’d said something?

Ian thought he would have, or he said to himself that he would have, because from the beginning, with the heptapods, he’d been the one to believe her. He’d stood in front of a gun for her, with no evidence or reason for risking his life. This should have been just as easy.

Believing came less easy, though. At some point in their relationship, that certainty he had for her just faded away, without him even knowing until it was gone. That was when the fights started, quiet shouting matches downstairs while they hoped Hannah was asleep and couldn’t hear them. Snide comments drifted into words that cut, then drifted into the kind of things that couldn’t be taken back, no matter how much they apologized.

It only got worse when Hannah got sick. At first they thought it was a little thing, something that would be gone with a little help. It wasn’t. It only kept growing and hurting her, and them.

They weren’t the same after that. He’d moved out voluntarily, and by that point it only stung a little that Louise didn’t ask him to stay. Hannah did, though, and it broke his heart. It still broke his heart when he thought about it. So much time wasted away from her. He hadn’t known exactly how little time they had left together.

Louise might have known. At some point he was convinced she did, and he became paranoid. Then he started seeing a therapist, because that was what responsible people did when they thought their lives were falling apart and they needed help putting everything back together again. The therapist had convinced him all those thoughts were only in his mind, that they weren’t reality.

He held onto that through the last days at Hannah’s sickbed, through the funeral, through the aftermath. But that put him in close contact with Louise for the first time since their divorce was finalized, and he couldn’t help but watch her again.

She mourned their daughter, just like he did, but he thought the mourning might have come too soon. At Hannah’s birthday, just months before she died, Louise was sad, almost listless. There was grief in her eyes that shouldn’t have been there, not yet. Ian began to wonder if it had been there all along and he hadn’t noticed it. Hadn’t wanted to notice it.

If she had known from the beginning, maybe from the beginning, why didn’t she try to change anything? It made him burn with anger and grief, late at night when he couldn’t sleep. He’d hear the quiet breathing next to him, peaceful and sure, and think about Hannah and think about Louise and think about the life they’d lived and how it could have been different.

The arrival of the heptapods had been the beginning, and at the time he’d been excited and curious. Life _could_ not be the same after that. And he never expected it to be. But now, he thought maybe it should have been. But whether he was the one who should have done something different, or Louise, he didn’t know.

Hannah had asked about the heptapods for the first time when she was five. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard about them, from him and Louise or from others. They were in the news sometimes still, and in books and in movies. And in textbooks, Ian was pretty sure, but Hannah wouldn’t read those for a few years yet.

She asked for a story about speaking to the heptapods, both fascinated and terrified by the descriptions of their long, spindly legs and the black spray of their words. It seemed so long ago by then, despite the fact that both he and Louise still sometimes received communications from the government on the subject. It felt like telling her a fairy tale, not something they’d really lived through.

Louise had been the one to tell most of the stories. She worked with words and was a better storyteller than him, because math wasn’t as exciting to five year olds. He’d loved to watch her as she told the stories, her eyes distant and full of emotion.

He didn’t realize until years later, the night after the funeral, that the emotion had been grief. And then he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Grief was what had broken them apart, long before grief was a fixture in their lives. But Louise had always known something he hadn’t. And she’d just let it happen.

She’d let him say words that he regretted even now, what felt like two lifetimes from the late night fights in the dimly lit living room. She’d said things too, knowing what the result would be. She’d watched in silence as he walked away.

Sometimes he wanted to go back, before Hannah’s death, before their marriage, before the heptapods. Maybe then he could make different choices, could steer his life away from the grief and the tragedy of a broken family. If he knew then what he knew now, would he change it all?


End file.
